While I can appreciate the effort you've put into researching this, I can't identify with the drawbacks of mod_perl DSO vs. the advantages/conveniences of running them. Particularly if you're not having any problems with them at all. The worst disadvantage I could pull out of the guide is probably the 20% slowdown at server startup. So what?

With respect to the rest of the guide cons, most of those are very platform-specific, and don't sound applicable to Linux. As far as the mod_perl-list thread is concerned, the reader lays it out there... yes, it appears this individual may be having problems with DSO and mod_perl, but the alternative is to compile Apache without any DSO support? Come on!

It appears that you're applying a handful of individual's specific problems to the whole DSO bunch. I run DSO's pretty religiously without any problems (granted, I'm also not hosting anything with serious volume), as well as thousands of other folks out there.

As far as the mod_perl-list thread is concerned, the reader lays it out there... yes, it appears this individual may be having problems with DSO and mod_perl, but the alternative is to compile Apache without any DSO support? Come on!

This "mod_perl DSO == bad" approach that I am coming from is not so much the result of an evening of research, but more the result of over a year lurking on the mod_perl lists. You are not the first to challenge that most of the eviednce against DSOs is anecdotal -- again, see the list.

Also just my two cents. Personally, I have seen no reason not to compile it statically, and some personal experience with segfaults caused by mod_perl as a DSO. Hence, I will continue to err on the side of caution (and also speed :) and build mod_perl in statically.